


He's a fish and a babey

by Hawkogirl



Series: ATLANTIS BOY HOURS [1]
Category: Asagao Academy: Normal Boots Club
Genre: Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Fluff, Hes just an entire fish boy, Kinda, M/M, Marine Biology, Pre-Relationship, Romantic Fluff, THIS ENTIRE THING OWNS MY HEART, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Underwater, very scaley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-26 07:07:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20738222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hawkogirl/pseuds/Hawkogirl
Summary: Jeff didn’t know any species of fish with brightly glowing orange eyes, let alone with almost heart-shaped pupils. He didn’t know of anything that was almost as big as a person and seemed to have legs, alongside a large fishtail.





	He's a fish and a babey

**Author's Note:**

> THIS AU OWNS MY ENTIRE HEART OH MY GOD

**Day 11**

**Depth-100 meters**

**Notes-Approaching seafloor. Submarine completely stable. Little visibility outside the sub.**

  
  


There was something completely terrifying about the fact that if anything failed, everyone would die. And there was something peaceful about the depth they were at, the tranquil, undisturbed darkness. 

The three of them were all here for different reasons. Lucah was content to observe current patterns and water samples, and Mai, despite being an engineer and navigator, was a bit overenthusiastic about the possibility of discovering a new animal. 

Jeff, the friendly local marine biologist, didn’t think it was probable. They weren’t deep enough for it to be likely. Finding a weird-ass fish or crab was typically all that happened when you hung out near trenches.

So, unlikely. Not impossible. 

“Hey, Jeff!” Mai’s head popped in. “We got food.” 

He looked down at the three test tubes and a group of eye droppers and chemicals. He’d been zoning out for quite a while, huh? “Uh, let me finish this first.” 

Mai gave him a look. “You’ve had nothing but a single granola bar in twelve hours. If I must throw you over my shoulder and drag you out of here, so be it.”

“I believe that.” His gaze strayed to the mess on his desk. “Yeah, I guess I could use some food. 

“You guess?” She muttered. “You are a walking pile of bones, Fabre.”

He chuckled before following, immediately hit by the smells of whatever Lucah had been cooking. Which smelled delicious.

“Eat quickly, we’re hitting the seafloor soon and I don’t want to get food everywhere.” Lucah motioned to the plates of food already set out. Mai grabbed hers, basically vibrating with constant energy. 

“Everything you make is insanely good!” Mai mumbled between bites.

Lucah laughed. “I try.”

The meals were finished, plates were cleaned, and the sub jostled as it reached the bottom, the small crew bracing themselves. As soon as it steadied, Mai sprinted off, words jumbling over each other as she said something probably coming down to having to check and make sure everything was stable.

“D’ya need anything before I leave, Jeff?” Lucah asked, gathering several notebooks and a pen.

He shook his head, and the red-headed woman left.

The blackness around the underwater vessel was smothering, but at the same time almost comforting. He couldn’t see very far into the water, let alone at all - really, anything could be out there and he’d never know, but it reminded him of nighttime. Not the horror story kind, but the late-night after watching movies with your friends kind. It made him tired more than it made him worry.

Unfortunately for him, he had to keep working. No time for an impromptu nap because the ocean demanded it.

  
  
  


_ “Jeff!” _

Jeff snapped out of his stupor with a jolt that nearly knocked over several test tubes. “Mai! Dude!”

Mai almost knocked even more shit over in an attempt to get into the room quickly. “Shut up and get in here!”

What could possibly be so important? He sighed. Had she seen a fish? A lobster? That wasn’t exactly revolutionary. He’d seen so many different variations of fish and crustacean he was almost certain he could walk in, name it, tell Mai exactly what it ate, ten fun facts, and the names of everyone in its family to the third generation back.

...He didn’t know anything with brightly glowing orange eyes, let alone with almost heart-shaped pupils. He didn’t know of anything that was almost as big as a person and seemed to have legs, alongside a large fishtail.

“Woah…”

The orange eyes blinked once, obviously fixed on the submarine, and the movement of the subtly darker silhouette signaled it was moving closer moments before it moved into the light coming from the submarine. 

As more and more of its body became visible, the realization came to Jeff with a jolt as scaled legs ending in webbed feet, clawed and webbed fingers, and a face scaled, yet so human came into his vision, just as surprised as him, eyes wide with curiosity. Fins stretched across its forearms, back, shins, and down its tail.Its body was a deep turquoise as far as he could see, and he was suddenly overcome with a sense he shouldn’t be referring to the scaled creature as “it.”

Mai vocalized his thoughts. “Holy shit, I think we just found some sort of real-life merperson.”

The “merperson” reached out and tapped the glass, head tilted, lips parted, blinking, before pressing his palm to it in careful observation.

In a shock of sudden courage, he pulled something so cheesy and cinematic the ridiculousness almost broke through to conscious thought, he took two steps forward and pressed his palm to the glass, making the creature smile widely and let out muffled clicking noises in response.

Jeff sent a slight smile in response, and the look of excitement the fish-man gave in response made Jeff grow attached more quickly than he thought possible. “Oh my god…” 

The scaled person excitedly ran his hands through his hair, smiling widely with pointed teeth. Flashes of light signaled Mai was snapping pictures in the background, which made him squeak and Jeff was left to watch as the aquatic person darted backward, startled. 

“Dude!”

Mai blinked. “If we found a whole ass merman, I want proof we found a whole ass merman.” 

He swam closer again, slightly cautious, eyes darting analytically over the group. A series of clicks, frog like sounds, and somewhat screeches followed, the scaled man clearly trying to communicate with them. Jeff gave a sympathetic look and shook his head, disappointment crossing the underwater man’s face.

Lucah froze in the doorway with a “Holy shit!”, watching the barely illuminated face turn to her and offer a smile.

With a powerful bat of his tail, the fish-man glided down to where the submarine hit the seafloor, laying on the rock in a spot where he can still gaze up at the three scientists, orange eyes wide with curiosity. 

His gaze traveled around their room before with a few noises of excitement, he darted off suddenly. 

“Wh-Where the hell did he go?” He’s not sure why he said that, he can still see the other’s dark shape flicking through the water and he returns in a matter of seconds, smiling. Mai choked on something when he excitedly held up a dead fish for them to see.

“Is he threatening us?!”

He turned. “Mai, he’s literally offering us a fish. His hard-earned prey.”

“Oh.” She shrugged. “To be fair, it’s covered in blood. And dead.”

Jeff met the fish-man’s hopeful gaze. “Call it incredibly stupid, but I’m going to try to go out there with him.”

  
  


“Mr. Hamster, can you hear me?”

He chuckled slightly. “Yep. I’m heading out now.”

“Alright.” A noise occurred as if Mai had dropped her microphone. “Uh, try to see if he’s friendly, and maybe take his blood or a scale or something so we can find out more about him. Genetically. You get the idea.”

He snorted, pushing himself out of the water-filled chamber of the submarine into the ocean. To his surprise, the scaled man was sitting just outside the door, and swam over, letting out noises likely a part of the creature’s unknown language.

The webbed fingers traced over his clothing, attempting to pull at it slightly before Jeff stopped his hand and began guiding it down his arm. The other stared at the goggles, and it took a moment to realize it was the only part of him not covered by the wetsuit. He seemed to understand Jeff was the same as the group in the sub at the least, and he couldn’t currently measure how intelligent it was, though the consensus at the moment seemed to be “very.”

The aquatic man darted away, returning with the fish from earlier. He seemed very excited to see Jeff accept the gift.

“I have known you for less than an hour but if anything happened to you I’d kill everyone in this ocean and then myself.” 

The aquatic creature allowed Jeff to touch his arms, even allowing Jeff to remove an extremely loose scale. The scales seemed more lizardlike in nature. Hell, most of him was like that, with rough, wrinkled skin stretching across his chest and stomach. Stripes and spots of scales seemed to glow at his will, and a backpack-like thing woven from seaweed was slung across his back, woven similarly to the clothing he wore, two pieces similar to shorts and a tank top. Or a crop top. It was pretty dark, but he was almost certain it was the second.

“I have an announcement to make. He’s babey.”

Mai’s voice replied. “I’m assuming that’s in the ‘pure’ way.”

“He is not, in fact, a child. He is just the purest thing I have ever interacted with in my life.” By now, both were sitting on the rocky bottom, the scaled person playing with his fingers and eyes darting in a way that made Jeff take the signal and scoot closer, letting him lean on Jeff.

Mai laughed on the other end. “Hypothetically, we have that big room we can fill and drain with water as much as we want. Couldn’t we, say, hang out with a fish babey down there?”

The underwater man said something Jeff couldn’t understand. “Slow your roll, Mai. He let me take a scale and I want to know a bit more before we let him inside, as much as I love him.”

“That’s fair.”

  
  
  


Their fish-man, was, in fact, an amphibian. 

Mai was almost too thrilled to hear that it was possible their new friend could breathe air, and Lucah just made them promise to keep him contained somewhere at first.

With that, Jeff donned his gear and set out to get the amphibian man into their sub without scaring him. Which was much easier than anticipated, even if he looked a bit nervous.

The aquatic creature blinked repeatedly as he entered the somewhat illuminated chamber, half-filled with water to the point where someone (read: Mai) could walk around up there and watch the fishie boy go without trouble. Even if it seemed dim to the eyes of the three humans, the amphibian had presumably lived his entire life in close to complete darkness.

Jeff’s head broke the water, and he quickly removed everything he didn’t need. The aquatic man stayed several inches under the surface, cautiously poking a hand out of the water. 

He then pushed his head up to his shoulders from the water, gasping, clearly unused to the idea he had something that wasn’t simply “gills”. 

Several uneven, somewhat ragged breaths followed in the time it took Jeff to swim over, grab the aquatic being’s hand, and press it to his chest, attempting to get him to breathe with Jeff. “Wait-Come on, breathe deeply. Like this! Deep breaths, you’re alright. In, out.” 

It worked for several seconds, the aquatic creature doing his best to follow Jeff’s breathing patterns before the creature seemed to zone out, staring at the place where his hand was pressed against Jeff’s chest. 

And then Jeff suddenly realized the fishie boy had forgotten to breathe. 

Panicking, he grabbed the scaley boy and shoved his face underwater until he could see the slits of his gills flick open and shut several times, exposing dark pink muscle, before he let go and allowed the other to break through to the surface again. The amphibian was clearly nervous, a bit lower in the water and small sounds kept breaking from his mouth. 

Jeff reached out, rubbing his shoulder. “You’re okay, you just have to breathe.” The creature pushed himself a bit closer, nervousness flooding his gaze. “You’re going to be fine.” Jeff moved his hand and stroked the hair at the back of the other’s head.

Eventually, Jeff pressed the scaled hand back to his chest, helping the aquatic man to breathe until he pulled his hand away of his own accord, breathing steadily.

“You’re doing really well.” There was almost no way he understood, but he still seemed happy to receive the praise.

With a soft noise, the creature pointed at Jeff several times.

“I think he’s asking your name.” Mai guessed from the edge of the pool, feet dipping in the water. The scaled creature clicked some sort of greeting and Mai smiled. “Hello, fish boy!”

“He’s an amphibian.”

Mai shrugged.

Jeff turned, pointing at himself and saying his name. A smile spread across the amphibious man’s face before he pointed to himself and spoke his little clicks and screeches.

“...Okay, Luke!”

Mai giggled. “I don’t think that’s his name.”

“Close enough.”

The man now coined Luke swam forward, gazing at the platforms. A series of screeches and clicks followed as Luke pointed. 

“We can try to help you walk.” 

After an overcomplicated hassle of Jeff needing to change but the fishie boy not wanting to wait to explore the sub, Mai and Jeff eventually got Luke out of the water, even if both ended up pretty soaked in the process. 

Luke laid there for several moments, long thick fishtail still dangling in the water even if the rest of him, including legs, was on the surface. Jeff kneeled next to him, and the creature slid over, picking up one of Jeff’s arms and turning it over, comparing it to one of his own scaley, turquoise, finned arms. He lifted an arm into his lap, running his fingers along smooth skin.

Jeff scooted closer, allowing Luke to mess with his arm and hand. The curiosity was honestly adorable.

After he was satisfied with playing with Jeff’s hands, Luke pushed himself upwards, staring at Jeff’s face with confusion, and proceeded to try to poke him in the eye, clicking apologetically in concern as Jeff winced and rubbed his eye. 

Mai laughed. “While you two bond, I’ll go sell Lucah on this entire friend.”

  
  
  


A scaley man darted into Jeff’s lab, nearly tripping over himself in his excitement. 

“Hey, Luke.” Jeff was almost 90% sure Luke didn’t understand a word he was saying, but he still seemed to understand, at the least, it was a greeting. “You look excited.”

Luke grinned, rocking back and forth on his feet. “Juh-ee-fuh.”

A wide grin spread across Jeff’s face, warmth blossoming in his chest. “Aww, that was really good, dude!” Jeff pulled him into a hug, the warmth growing and spreading when he felt Luke’s arms wrap around him. God, he was really adorable. And there was something about his name being the first thing Luke tried to say that made him feel like the most important person on earth. 

Jeff’s arms remained tightly wound around him for almost a minute before he realized something. “You’re shivering.” He muttered. “Wait! You’re cold blo-I’m an idiot!”

He grabbed Luke’s wrist, leading him to the couch, where Luke sat and Jeff ran off to grab blankets, piling them over Luke and crawling under the heap with him, gently holding them. Luke returned it, lifting Jeff up higher to lay his head on Luke’s shoulder.

“God, you’re too cute for this shit.”

**Author's Note:**

> comments? kudos?


End file.
